windows v.s. linux program install/uninstall
Today I installed some packages on my wife's win xp system and realized that you can get into trouble installing and / or uninstalling software in windows.
After I installed the programs and we tried them out, my wife decided we should delete them. When I used the add/remove function I got all kinds of messages about shared dll files; asking if I wanted to delete them. Some were in the windows\system folder and thus I was faced with either delete something that maybe I shouldn't or leave a bunch of unused progams in my system. I also wondered what sort of crud was being left in my wife's system registry. I decided to use the system restore to restore to the start of the day, but after rebooting windows told me it could not restore (my daughter had the same problem in win me). Fortunately I also had GO BACK so I was able to restore the system to what it was like before the program installs.
In Linux if you install with RPMs or make files you can always atleast determine what files were installed. RPM's erase function does a good job of removing stuff. With the make file you camn read it and see what was installed per the targets.
On my wife's and my daughter's systems, there are system restore disks that will bring the system back to what it was like when it was purchased - they reformat the disk and install the original system image. In linux, if by trying to uninstall some software, you clobber something you can normally reinstall the damaged software and be OK. If you have to you can boot into root at the command line and try to fix stuff, or if it's really bad use a rescue disk. I can't imagine having to actually reformat the hard drive and lose all the data.
After I installed the programs and we tried them out, my wife decided we should delete them. When I used the add/remove function I got all kinds of messages about shared dll files; asking if I wanted to delete them. Some were in the windows\system folder and thus I was faced with either delete something that maybe I shouldn't or leave a bunch of unused progams in my system. I also wondered what sort of crud was being left in my wife's system registry. I decided to use the system restore to restore to the start of the day, but after rebooting windows told me it could not restore (my daughter had the same problem in win me). Fortunately I also had GO BACK so I was able to restore the system to what it was like before the program installs.
In Linux if you install with RPMs or make files you can always atleast determine what files were installed. RPM's erase function does a good job of removing stuff. With the make file you camn read it and see what was installed per the targets.
On my wife's and my daughter's systems, there are system restore disks that will bring the system back to what it was like when it was purchased - they reformat the disk and install the original system image. In linux, if by trying to uninstall some software, you clobber something you can normally reinstall the damaged software and be OK. If you have to you can boot into root at the command line and try to fix stuff, or if it's really bad use a rescue disk. I can't imagine having to actually reformat the hard drive and lose all the data.
posted by konstantine at 4:20 PM
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